The Drama

Living in Las Vegas for the last 2 1/2 years has been an adventure and nothing short of a cultural shock to say the least. Being the small town girl that I am and will always be (no matter where I live), lets just say I've pretty much seen my share of reckless drivers in this city. After the first year, I stopped counting people that ran red lights and instead of hurrying when the light turned green, I'd look for those crazies trying to bully through the intersections. Now that I'm more experienced, I just hold my breath, take my chances, check all my mirrors and drive. Jonathan's proud of me for being more assertive, and well, I just feel very blessed that I can get around this big city. Such luck started to wane on Saturday when Jonathan got rear ended by an older lady while he was stopped at an intersection. I like to think of it as a preliminary experience for what happened yesterday. Though there was nothing more than a scratch on his back bumper, he took all the precautions, filling out a police report, exchanging insurance information, etc. He woke up Sunday with a sore neck but that was the worst of it. Now for the real drama: At 7 p.m. Sunday evening we were just sitting down for dinner and putting food on our plates when we heard the first CRASH outside our apartment. Stunned and wondering what in the world had happened we heard about 3 more consecutive crashes. I'm not sure who made it to the balcony first, but there Jonathan and I witnessed the 4 car pile up below (which included both our vehicles). An obviously drunk driver in a grey dodge pickup was insistently trying to escape the scene, thus reving the engine and crashing it several more times into the small (and by this time, very demolished jeep at the front of the line) By then I was on the phone dialing 911 and Jonathan and the neighbors were yelling for the guy to stop. (for some reason, he just couldn't figure out what was going on) (excuse the sarcasm). Anyhow, my concern as he drove away of course were the other people on the road. It was horrifying to think of people in harms way. We found out a short while later that he had amazingly found his way home, only a few blocks away. He wasn't hard to track down though because he left a trail of leaking oil from the scene right to his house. Needless to say, we had a whole crew of police officers, paramedics, upset neighbors, flashing lights, broken glass, leaking gasoline and a tow truck outside. Luckily, our cars were at the end of the line and received the least damage. Still driveable and with good insurance we feel very blessed. It is moments like these that make me appreciate just a normal, non-dramatic day. I am especially grateful that no one was physicallly hurt, as the damage could have been so much worse.